by Mel Teshco
His brow furrowed. “I ask that you call me Judas.”
“As you wish,” she whispered hoarsely. Damn, where had all her fire and courage gone? Now she was alone with him, anticipating his undoubtedly skilled seduction, she was all adolescent shy. Her chin kicked up and he released his clasp. She’d not come all this way, gone to all the trouble of being selected by his royal finders, to back down now!
“Oh, I do wish,” he said hoarsely. “And what is it I call you?”
“Akeisha.”
“Akeisha,” he repeated softly, “my real-life angel.”
As he moved over her on all fours, she reclined beneath him with a sharp intake of breath, part passionate need and part fright.
“Do not fear me, Akeisha, I’ll make sure you want me as much as I want you.”
Dear lord, I already do!
Her breath rasped in and out of her lungs, trapping his exotic, dark-spiced scent deep inside and making her desire him all the more.
What is wrong with me? I’ve never been attracted to a human before.
Then again, none of the males she’d encountered had possessed anywhere near this man’s natural charisma. Had Judas not been king she’d still be drawn to him, aroused by his presence.
Judas moved up and she gasped, aware of every inch of his hard body as it scraped along her feminine softness. His mouth closed over hers and any self-doubts died, as if a flame snuffed. Except she was growing hotter and hotter as his tongue delved past her lips and tangled with hers, a slow dance that allowed her to explore and taste even as he explored and tasted.
He groaned against her lips, his cock thick and insistent between them. In an imitation of the act itself he deliberately ground his arousal between her thighs, her pants a gossamer-thin barrier.
Oh god. Penetration wasn’t necessary for her to all but convulse with pleasure beneath him and gasp into his mouth with a need to be owned. Because that was what this man, this king, would do. An alpha male, he’d possess her, make her his own. And damn it, right then that was just what she wanted.
All she wanted.
To the point she was able to control her inner beast, push it into the recesses of her mind, her body.
She’d deal with the fallout…later.
His mouth left hers as he went south, pressing kisses along her jaw, her throat, his lips soft, warm. And utterly relentless. When he suckled through the rakkia cloth concealing the tip of one breast, she arched upward with a moan.
The king was a stranger and yet he created sensations within she’d never felt with any other lover, sensations that left her body humming with urgent need.
His stare glittered, knowing and bold as he turned his attention to her other aching breast, his tongue swirling and mouth pulling until her nipples puckered rock-hard, her nerve endings flaring into sensitized life.
She was panting when he reared back, his dark eyes probing. “I want you, angel.” With deft hands he removed her bra top. Her breasts spilled free and she arched higher still. Wanton. Eager. Desperate.
His smile ruthless and his eyes alight with shameless lust, he drew first one breast into his mouth, then the other.
She clutched at his head, pulling him down, holding him close, keeping him still. The pressure of his mouth and sweeping tongue was almost too much to bear, yet not enough, not nearly enough. Her fingers dug into his scalp as he delighted her with his carnal skill. “Judas…I can’t take…much…more of this.”
He released her heavy, aching flesh and she withheld a whimper of denial, a need to shamelessly beg for more.
“You want me to speed things up?” he asked, honey-smooth voice aroused and amused all at once.
She nodded, every stimulated cell dancing with life, with shameless want. “Yes. Please…yes.”
His lips pulling into a wicked smile, he kissed between her breasts, his tongue a seductive slide along her skin as he slowly worked his way downward. When he reached her navel and licked the outer rim of the indent, she shivered violently. “Please,” she whimpered.
“Please, what?” he asked hoarsely.
She was beyond self-respect now. “Please…end this torment.”
His stare flashed. “Angel, the torment has only just begun.”
Chapter Two
In one smooth motion he hooked the waistband of her pants and pulled them down. Throwing them aside, he pushed her thighs wide and dipped his head. His opened mouth covered her exposed flesh and the tip of his tongue slithered up and down.
Oh. Fuck. Yes!
She cried out as stark bolts of pleasure shot thorough her body. When he licked around her clit in ever-quickening circles before swiping hard across the nub, then harder still, she moaned restlessly, helplessly. Ecstasy was just out of reach.
Staring over her pussy to watch the play of delight that undoubtedly flashed across her face as though it was an open book, he pulled the hypersensitive flesh into his mouth before he suckled hard. She fell apart with a scream, the explosion fierce, intense.
He lapped at her essence, an act that had her inner beast abruptly pushing to the fore, inwardly roaring for its own release while her contractions continued on and on. Endless, glorious spasms of bliss.
Judas moved over her, and she looked up at his face with half-closed eyes. Her stare widened. Right then he looked like the predator she kept within.
“It’s not over yet, angel.”
Taking hold of one of her thighs, he pushed back until her leg rested along his hard torso, exposing her pink sex to his glittering stare. “This time when you scream,” he rasped, “it’ll be my name leaving your pretty lips.”
She didn’t even try to formulate an answer as he clasped his shaft with a hand and aligned the head of his cock to her slick cunt. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he paused, his glittering stare holding hers. Then his hips propelled forward and he filled her to the hilt, forcing the breath right from her lungs.
“So tight,” he ground out.
“I’m. No. Virgin.”
“I never imagined you were.”
Her eyes narrowed and she wondered if her pupils had become cat’s slits. “It’s in my nature to fuck,” she said, wanting to push him to the edge in a far different way. “From what I’ve heard I’ll need that trait to keep up with my king.”
He pulled back, his cock sliding from the involuntary clenching of her muscles until he was almost free. His eyes blazed, an unearthly, possessive light that turned her on almost as much as the act itself. “Angel, I’m not complaining.”
He thrust back inside her with brutal force. She mewled, her animal side rejoicing in the savagery, the stunning virility of the man above her. Words were no longer necessary. And when he rocked back and forward with long, hard strokes that gained momentum, deeper, harder, faster, he pushed her right back to the cataclysmic edge of nirvana.
He stilled, jaw set. Then he cupped her ass and sat back on his knees, tugging her right along with him. Lifting her other leg high and wide, he plunged into her again, once, twice.
The angle pushed her right over the edge. And beyond.
She let go, crying out his name as an orgasm crashed through her womb and blasted her high, then higher still.
Goddess above, is this how true ecstasy feels?
Only when she drifted slowly back to earth did she comprehend Judas had climaxed right after her, his groan loud and long, his eyes squeezing closed as he shuddered with a rapture that shot his seed deep.
She shut her own eyes on a sigh. No male had ever made her feel so replete, definitely none human. A mortal wasn’t meant to make her feel this satisfied…this…good.
At least as a shifter she couldn’t catch a human disease. Nor would she fall pregnant. It was genetically impossible for her kind to conceive with a mortal. That honor would fall to a shifter male. A larakyte—panther and human all rolled into one, just like her.
So why did she immediately think of a boy with long black hair and an intelligent stare? A girl wi
th silver hair but dark eyes?
Her inner beast stirred again at the thought of procreation. She squeezed her eyes shut all the harder, concealing her true identity from Judas. The windows to the soul could reveal much, and he couldn’t learn the truth. Not ever.
Too many lives depended on it.
“Don’t hide from me Akeisha,” he murmured huskily. “I want to see your every emotion, know you inside and out.”
Her gut clenched. That’s never going to happen.
She bit into her lower lip. “Is that an order, Majesty?”
His lips were warm and surprisingly soft as he pressed a kiss to first one eyelid, then the other. And on a sigh, her lids flickered open to find his dark stare searching hers, hot and amused. “I don’t force orders when the coaxing is so much sweeter.”
He clasped her hands and stretched her arms behind her head, his mouth covering hers and almost lazily sampling.
She squirmed. His cock was already thickening and growing inside her, throbbing and hot.
So the rumors—weren’t rumors. Judas was insatiable.
She kept her groan all on the inside. If he’d not been human he’d have been her perfect mate in every way. She swallowed. If she wasn’t careful he’d wear her defenses down to a nub, exposing her secret.
But then he was stroking inside her again, a slow, long rhythm that doused any doubts as it re-stoked the fire within.
His smile was all molten heat when he rasped, “Perhaps I’ll have my cotesh servants tie you to my bed and touch you in the places they weren’t allowed to before?” At her indrawn breath, he added, “Maybe I’ll even allow them to use their mouths, their tongues.”
He knew the thought would bring her to the precipice that much faster. Words were a weapon when one knew how to wield them. And Judas’ arsenal was huge.
His eyes glinted. Dark. Dangerous. “And afterward, perhaps my eunuch guard will be allowed to pleasure you with the many piercings he has…below—I’ve been told the ecstasy far outweighs the pain.”
She tossed beneath him as though buffeted by a stormy, angry sea. “You’d want that?” she gasped.
His strokes plowed harder, faster. His stare glowed with possessive intent. “No, angel. You’re right. You’re mine. All mine.”
If the words of before had pushed her to the edge, the latter toppled her right over.
Her inner beast roaring for some respite, her hands broke free from Judas’ clasp, her fingers spearing into claws behind his shoulders. And as a climax hurtled her into a realm of shameless pleasure, she dug deep, raking a bloodied path down the king’s back.
Judas sucked in a startled breath. Head thrown back, jaw clenched, he roared his pleasure, releasing into her with great shuddering spurts even as she used force of will to retract her claws and retain her human hands.
Oh. My. God.
She’d marked him! Given into her beast instincts.
She took a steadying breath. She could only hope he’d assume her fingernails had cut him deep. Please god, let him think that.
Judas moved onto his side and tugged her close. Still joined, their breaths merged until they were kissing, slowly, tenderly, coming down from the delicious aftershocks of their lovemaking.
She stared into his heavy-lidded eyes. Shifters had lusty appetites and she was no exception. She’d had many men, but not once had she experienced such bliss, such connection. “I don’t want anyone else but you,” she whispered.
Her heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t a lie in the desperate hope he’d fall for her. It wasn’t even something she’d said for the sake of the larakytes.
It was the truth.
He paused, then smiled. “I’m glad. Because sharing you isn’t an option, despite what I said earlier to heighten your pleasure.”
She leaned forward, kissing him in a slow, lingering merge of lips and tongue that unconsciously sealed the deal. “I’m holding you to that.”
His smile widened, languid and hot. And as his cock hardened yet again inside her, he reluctantly pulled free. “I think you’ve had enough of me for now.”
No. Not enough. Never enough.
She wanted to be his everything, his every thought and every care. Then maybe she could make him understand the urgency of the larakytes’ situation.
If most of Judas’ people had their way, her race wouldn’t just be on the knife edge of extinction. They’d be no more. Period.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t…
Tiredness pulled at her in relentless waves and she closed her eyes with a contented sigh. The lilting and seductive music was the last thing she heard before sleep at last claimed her.
* * * * *
“We’re running from the humans again?”
Akeisha’s father looked up at her shocked outrage, his silver eyebrows drawn together and his forehead deeply furrowed. And suddenly she saw beyond the long-lived man who’d once been a mighty king of a thriving shifter race.
Right then he looked old, tired and overburdened. Her chest tightened. She’d imagined her father to be around for…forever. Perhaps that was the foolish hope of being an only child born late in her parents’ life—so late the terrible ordeal of a shifter birth had killed her mother—the queen of the larakytes.
Her father stepped toward her, his eyes as they roamed over her face both sad and despairing.
She hid a surge of too-familiar guilt. He thought he concealed the anguish that flashed in his eyes every time he looked at his daughter and was reminded of the wife he’d lost…and still mourned deeply.
“Akeisha, our species grows more fragile every day that we linger here. The humans have secretly killed our kind for two decades now and I fear an open revolt soon, despite their king’s orders to leave us alone.” His hand cupped her chin, his expression yielding to his undisclosed grief. “When that happens, they’ll come after the heart of the larakytes—you, my princess. And they’ll kill you.”
She shook her head, refusing to admit defeat. Not this time. The larakytes would leave the Scantia forest over her dead body. She knew as well as her father that the desert would wipe out all but the strongest shifters. But he’d been pushed into a corner with the latest round of attacks.
The humans had recently been sending their bravest warriors into the forest fringes, destroying anyone—anything—they came across, including the once prolific black panthers who were clearly not shifters, not larakyte.
She tilted her chin higher in his hand. “Then what better way to hide from the humans than amongst them?”
As her dad’s eyes flared with shock, she added, “I can get the king’s attention, coax him into changing his beliefs to fully protect our people.”
Her father’s hands curled into fists. “Not. A. Chance.” But when he stood, moisture sparkled from the corners of his once-vibrant eyes. “He eats little girls like you for breakfast.”
“I’m the last chance for the larakytes survival,” she said softly. “Our only chance.”
* * * * *
She woke with the reality of her dream sitting heavy on her shoulders, and Judas wrapped around her as though he’d never let her go.
Her eyelids jerked apart, guilt pushing aside any lingering pleasure.
She’d yet to broach the subject of the larakytes to the king, had yet to have any impact at all on saving her own kind. Her lips compressed. She’d been too busy fulfilling the primal needs of her inner cat to consider the freedom and rights of her own kind.
She’d been selfish and weak—traits she despised in others.
“Mm. You’re awake,” Judas murmured huskily.
She swallowed back a further attack of morals. If self doubts caused her to withdraw from him now, Judas might well lose interest. He’d chosen her in the holding yard for one reason and one reason only.
She stretched in his hold, deliberately brushing against him. His cock jerked against her spine, evidence once again of his healthy appetite. His want.
“Good morning,�
�� she said hoarsely as heat flushed her face and bloomed below. Ready. Willing. Able.
His husky laugh sounded a little pained. “See what you do to me, angel?” Air touched her bare skin as he released her and pushed to his feet. “How does a bath sound?”
She rolled over and accepted his outstretched hand, “Utterly divine.” She forced her stare away from his straining shaft, the heavy sac beneath as he pulled her onto her feet.
Oh god.
Wake-up guilt didn’t stop her from imagining his amazing cock poised between her spread thighs before he plunged deep…
He turned. Shit. The deep, bloodied scratches on his back were all too evident as he led her out of his mandeolo. He hadn’t mentioned her…aggression, she could only hope it’d stay that way.
Her stare gravitated south and she resisted a primal, all too human urge to touch and explore the silky, unmarked skin of his delectable butt. She needed to refrain, lest he be reminded of his wounds a little higher on his back.
Her mind immediately projected an image of his cock, standing to attention out front. A grin split her face. She knew ways to make him forget his every scratch…
Two guards stood either side of the arched doorway to the bathing room. Akeisha pressed her grin into a straight line, pretending a normalcy she certainly didn’t feel. But she had to give the humans credit. Their eyes didn’t betray their thoughts at the approach of their naked and obviously aroused king, along with his equally naked—and aroused—mistress.
Judas didn’t break stride as he ordered the guards elsewhere. They all but scurried away as Judas brought her into the steaming-hot room, the same room in which the cotesh servants had washed her earlier. He moved down the steps and she followed him with an appreciative sigh.
The warm water felt glorious lapping at her chafed skin, the still-swollen flesh of her pussy. Seemed the king really did know when too much sex wasn’t a good thing for her. When he turned back to her she smiled. His self-restraint was…nice. As much as his body could obviously go another round or four, he’d been considerate of her wellbeing.